Louis Armstrong and His All Stars at the UNESCO Theater: The Ambassador of Jazz (Arabic-English poster distributed in Beirut)
The Ambassador of Jazz: a 1959 Beirut poster for Louis Armstrong
1959 bilingual poster for Louis Armstrong and his All Stars at the UNESCO Theater, Beirut, billed "The Ambassador of Jazz." NARA RG 306, NAID 6948729.
Techniques named on the archive record
Transfer
Date
March 24, 1959
Made by
U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East series
U.S. National Archives (NARA), RG 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East , retrieved October 3, 2026
Source
Public domain (U.S. government work; NARA RG 306) U.S. Information Agency / Department of State, March 24, 1959. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 6948729, 306-PPB-2).
Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.
An Arabic-English concert poster for Louis Armstrong and his All Stars at the UNESCO Theater in Beirut, with evening shows on 6 to 9 April and matinees on 7 and 9 April. Filed with U.S. Information Agency posters for Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, catalog date 24 March 1959 (NAID 6948729).
What the sheet prints
Orange and black. A big portrait in an engraved style shows a man with a trumpet raised. The Arabic block and the English block give the same facts: who is playing, where, which nights, and where to buy a ticket. The portrait is signed.
The Ambassador of Jazz
LOUIS ARMSTRONG and his All Stars
AT THE UNESCO THEATER
EVENINGS -- April 6, 7, 8, 9 / MATINEE -- April 7, 9
Tickets on sale ANTOINE LIBRARY, BAB EDRISS / KHAYAT LIBRARY, BLISS STREET
سفير الجاز / لويس ارمسترونغ ونجومه / على مسرح الاونيسكو
Who issued it
The sheet carries no government name. The National Archives files it in Record Group 306 with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, with a catalog date of 24 March 1959, about two weeks before the first show. The archive's record does not say who booked the tour or paid for the hall, and this page does not supply it.
How to read it
As a poster it is a concert bill, and an honest one: it says when and where, and it sends people to two bookshops for tickets. The one loaded phrase is the billing. "The Ambassador of Jazz" hands a diplomatic title to a trumpet player, and FRAME tags that transfer. The prestige of the man is lent to the country that sent the poster.
What was on offer was real. An American musician, playing his own music in a hall abroad, is about as voluntary as cultural persuasion gets: nobody had to buy a ticket, and anyone who did heard the thing itself, not a description of it. A free country's best advertisement is often its artists doing what they would do anyway. The question a reader can fairly put to any state-sponsored culture is whether the artist chose the program or the agency did. This record does not answer it. An earlier cultural sheet in the same agency's files, a 1953 handbill for a Manila stage play, raises the same question.
Sources
FRAME object record, Louis Armstrong and His All Stars at the UNESCO Theater: The Ambassador of Jazz (Arabic-English poster distributed in Beirut). Catalog date March 24, 1959.
U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, item NAID 6948729, 306-PPB-2, catalog.archives.gov. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
